Get Help for Specific Applications
Apple’s Help Viewer not only offers help for Mac OS X, but also provides an interface that other programs can use for their own help files. To see which programs have installed help files on your Mac, select the Library menu (see Figure 22-3). This shows the different help files installed on your Mac, available through Help Viewer.
| Note | Some applications’ help files won’t be listed in the Library menu until you’ve launched them once. Also, you’ll find some third-party applications’ help files listed here in addition to Apple applications. |
To look at a specific program’s help files, select it from the Library menu. The main help page for the application displays.
In this example, the iTunes and Music Store Help page offers four links: What’s New (new features in the latest version), Overview (a one-page description of the program’s main functions), Contents (a table of contents with clickable links), and Website (this takes you to the iTunes web site in your browser). Most of Apple’s applications have help files that are set up like this, though many of them don’t have a specific web site link.
Some applications use their own help systems, and these are always accessible from their Help menus. For example, if you select Help | Word Help Contents when in Microsoft Word, this application’s help opens.
Most third-party applications’ help systems work similar to Apple’s, with a main page and clickable links to go to specific topics. In addition, they generally offer a search function. In the Word help shown in the preceding illustration, click the Search button and then type the text you want to search for in the search field. Click Search, and several topics display in the left-hand column below the search field.
Click one of these links to display its help page.
To work with other help systems, see the instructions provided with them. These are generally topics such as Using Help or About Help.
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